To what extent should a dying person's wishes be honored?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Thread is relevant to Ginsburg, of course, but also about a broader issue.

At what point does one’s dying wish become so burdensome that it is no longer worth honoring?

Perhaps I’m overly cynical but I think almost any dying wish is questionable considering that the dead person is no longer around to see it (or verify that it has been done.) If it is a legal document, like a will and testament, then it should be honored, but otherwise, a dying person’s wish can be unreasonably onerous (to use a super absurd example, suppose that Aunt Mary says “My dying wish is that my niece, Jenny, will wear only green dresses for the rest of her life, since that is my favorite color.”)

At what point is a dying wish still within the bounds of reasonable and worth honoring, and at what point should it be disregarded?

2

In general, I don’t think dying wishes have any particular weight above any other wishes. If your dying wishes are burdensome or will cause problems, why should anyone follow them?

Where reasonable limits are will certainly vary by the person who would be responsible for carrying them out, but for me it’s a very low bar to get to unreasonable. I just don’t see why there should be weight attached to what someone wants/wanted just because they died shortly after that.

3

When my mother was dying in the hospital, she called me to her bedside. She said, “son, I want you to hear my dying wish.”

I leaned in close. “Yes mother, what is it?”

“Son, whatever you do, don’t ever use this doctor.”

(Apologies to Redd Foxx.)

4

Yeah, most people are not in the most competent of head spaces when they’re actively involved in, y’know, dying. In the run up to that final curtain, many people have come out with all kinds of spurious, pointless, annoying and actively harmful things they want other people to do like give them back their driver’s licenses or let them live at home when they’ve already burned down the kitchen twice or handle their own finances after they’ve already given shit tons of money needed for their own upkeep to charlatans and religious beggars. I’m not thinking dying wishes are any more or less binding than the ones that preceded them. Now if they’re saying they don’t want any lilies at their funeral, that’s cool or if they say they want one grandkid to get one special item they haven’t specified previously then that’s a little different–those I’d make a good faith effort to honor. But the big crazy ones? Yeah, no, sorry grandma you can bitch me out in the next life.

5

No fooling. One of my aunts, who did not have a will, told me that after she was gone I was supposed to tell her hard of hearing, wheelchair bound husband* that he was supposed to change his will to leave me their house instead of leaving it to his son. I did not touch that with a ten foot pole.

  • She had married late and he had only met me a few times.
6

Basically, things that have to do with the disposition of their remains, AND will not be overly burdensome to other people, AND do seem to be in line with their general values during life, ought not to be ignored. Other things usually can be. Exception: confessions to crimes. If someone wants to confess to a crime, and either wants a lawyer or police officer at the bedside, or wants you to record the confession, I would take this seriously. It may be a phantasm, but you only have one chance to find out.

I actually know someone who was a nurses’ aide, who recorded something on his phone that was a confession to embezzlement that settled a fraud case, and took a cloud of suspicion off an ex-employee, who was then offered a post facto severance package, after essentially being harassed out of the agency. I don’t know the person well-- just someone who goes to my synagogue, so maybe the story is being made more dramatic than it really was, but just saying.

A lot of people are in a desperate frame of mind right before death, and a lot of others are really tripping on pain killers. So people might fantasize things that they normally wouldn’t think about.

By way of comparison, I know an OB who will perform abortions on demand for regular patients who come in recently having learned they are accidentally pregnant, and for women carrying intended pregnancies that have had something go terribly wrong. (She does not advertise this service, and it is offered only to established patients). What she does not do, though, is about a 3rd trimester abortion for a woman who has been coming in regularly for check-ups for eight months, to all appearances, happy and excited about the pregnancy, then has a momentary freak-out and demands an abortion.

She gives the woman the one safe sedative that is available for the third trimester, and send her home, after making sure she won’t be alone, and has a therapist call her.

I’m just saying, women in the last few weeks of pregnancy can freak out-- I’ve been there, and I know-- and if life coming into the world can freak you out, your own life going out has to be freaky, especially if you are medicated for pain.

I’m sure a lot of “final words” need to be looked at in this context.

7

They say that a funeral isn’t for the dead person; it’s for the benefit of the living who are left behind. It seems reasonable to me to considering honoring a person’s dying wish in much the same way. When someone we care about dies, it’s common to want to do something to honor them, and fulfilling a dying wish could fill that purpose.

Of course it all depends on what the wish is. YMMV. I don’t have any personal experience with Dying Wishes.

8

I think if I were to express a dying wish, the main thing I would want is for the ones who might carry it out to SAY that of course they will do whatever it is. They don’t have to do it, you understand, just tell me they will. Then I can go, happily knowing I will get my way. How hard is that?